


Remember the (Godey's) Lady's (Book)

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Ambiguously Before 1x05, Bechdel Test Pass, Female Social Networks, Gen, Godey's Lady's Book, In Which The Author Finds Time For A Brief Mention of Moby-Dick and the Hicksite Controversy, Season 1, The Honestly Daunting Work of Performing Femininity and Various Takes on It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 19:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17924780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: Nurse Younge had recently a present of sturdy cotton twill from her sister-in-law, sent after the most oblique of references to hospital work's sartorial perils.





	Remember the (Godey's) Lady's (Book)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/gifts).



It was a close match, thought Mary Phinney as she collected bed pans, as to what travelled quicker through Mansion House: gossip, or the quick step. Her present occupation certainly implied the latter. She stifled a sigh, and told herself that there was little more for her to do, and the end of the day’s work was upon them. Then, there would be time for the consideration of news, and better: Nurse Younge had recently a present of sturdy cotton twill from her sister-in-law, sent after the most oblique of references to the sartorial perils of hospital work. 

She’d lay it out this evening, Mrs. Younge said, eying the bolt speculatively. Cutting always took more effort than the construction, she’d gone on, for once it was cut it was only a matter of repetition – but the vision to cut! Mary had volunteered earlier to find a ladies’ publication for the older nurse, who insisted that a grey head did not fusty senses make – particularly those around dress. 

Miss Green had been her first instinct. The rebel nurse, since she had no official position, paid little heed to Miss Dix’s edicts around proper dress, and could be found fussing even over what was obviously her maid’s ( _slave’s_ , Mary reminded herself) calicoes. But Emma Green had looked abashed, and said Mrs. Green had stored away all of her _Godey’s_ and _Arthur’s_ , and would sooner dig up her own mother’s gravestone for a rookery than part with her _La Belle Assemble_. 

“Perhaps,” Miss Green had drawled, “If the lines of war were not so strenuously drawn, we might have had June’s _Godey’s_?”

And there was an end of that avenue of search.

Mary’d found a tattered copy at the morning market, after a few day’s poking – shoved in a miscellaneous pile of broadsides and papers, headlines rioting together with the last few month’s news. As if to bless her task, a vague figure that was almost certainly Florence Nightengale graced the frontspiece, visible after the cover had been ripped away. And – goodness! – was that supposed to be _Dorothea Dix_? She’d handed over full fifty cents for it – certain she had cheated Mr. Godey, by about dollar’s worth – thinking it would be a worthy investment for a few nights’ entertainment.

At any road, it was waiting for her in her little attic room after she’d finished with the bedpans and linens, propped jauntily against her _Principia Mathematica_. It was a moment’s work to whisk it into her work basket, and to fetch the whole into the library where Mrs. Younge and others were waiting.

“It’s a year out of date,” Mary apologized, “but the plates are still there.”

“Famous!” Mrs. Younge took the book gleefully, waving off Mary’s apology. “And glory be, look at those ruffles! There can’t be less than a dozen yards in that skirt.”

Little Sister Isabella looked timidly around the older women, darning crumpled up in her hands. “I hope her laundress is well paid.”

“She’d have to be,” Miss Hastings interjected, caught between a sneer and a longing sigh, “Wearing –“ here she paused, flipping ahead – “white organza.”

Mrs. Younge took the book back, smiling wryly. “I’d have made three dresses out of that one skirt, when I was first married. Good Lord.”

“And caught influenza in every one of ‘em,” said Matron, closing the door behind her. 

“I wasn’t sorry to see petticoats, true enough. Good evening, Mrs. Brannan.”

“Mrs. Younge. Baroness.” She waved a little dismissively at the rest, and settled in a corner near to the open window, setting her workbasket on a table beside her. In a flash, she had fixed her pipe between her teeth and fished out a match.

Unperturbed by Matron’s gruff greeting, Mrs. Younge hummed and laid out the bolt, drawing a tape measure from her pocket. There was something old and sacred about this, Mary thought, taking a seat of her own next to Matron. Her own mother had done this, and her mother’s mother, and her mother, and so on. A woman’s ability to transform a thing, to make it greater than its parts.

Miss Green, though. Mary caught a glimpse of the Rebel nurse over her stocking-heel, the girl sat upright in a removed corner, plying a scrap of embroidery. It would have been hard to miss her, from her prickliness alone, but her pink silk floss flashed brilliantly again the hospital’s mending brought by the Sisters, or the various practicalities the other women had brought. Did she want to be here? Or was this another meeting that she’d set herself into, determined that her diminutive Confederate ward should not be forgotten? Surely there were more appealing drawing rooms and more refined company for a former Alexandria belle.

“Shall someone read?” asked Mrs. Younge.

Sister Isabella frowned. “May we catch up on the news, first? Sister Dorothea has a letter from home.”

“As long as you take care to talk loudly, I’ve no objection.” Mrs. Younge swiped a long line into the dark cotton, consulting her measuring tape and written measurements. “There’s nothing like silence to make a long task longer.”

Dorothea and Isabella didn’t need telling twice, though the older Sisters had looks of fond exasperation – and Miss Hastings and Matron, exasperation alone. Feeling at least partially responsible for the gathering – though, perhaps not responsible enough to dare Miss Hastings after a long day! – Mary turned to Matron and asked after her present work. Mrs. Brannan was a woman of dangerous wit and surprising gifts – and after more than one evening watching her handily best Dr. Foster on the chess board, Mary had not expected knitting to be one of them.

Matron regarded her yarn and bone needles with a kind of fond skepticism: a longshoreman at a microscope, or a dancing master at a plow. “It’s my sister that’s got the knack. But it’ll be winter soon enough, and the Army doesn’t outfit the boys worth a damn. My son’ll be needing this.”

“Is he with Pope?”

“McClellan. I had a letter last after Williamsburg.” She picked up the needles, and sized up the rows. “It’ll be a close run thing to finish, but I’ve a better hand to the posting than most mothers.”

Mary agreed, but Matron had already turned back to the task at hand, puffing thoughtfully to punctuate the _click-click_ of the needles.

Mary bent back to her work, listening to Mrs. Younge and Mrs. Baldwin compare news from their families, the schoolgirl-French of one of the nuns singing quietly after Sister Dorothea’s letter had run dry.

Some time later – it was an overcast day, so the shadows were no help – Mrs. Younge had come to the sleeves, and was surreptitiously sizing up Miss Green’s, one of the fashion-plate’s wide bishops, and her own. “I’m not sure this’ll drape nicely,” she said, absently, “It’s likely too stiff.”

Mary set aside her repaired stockings, and joined Mrs. Younge on the floor. She ran a corner of the bolt between her hands carefully. “Perhaps?”

“I suppose I’ll end up wearing the thickness out of it.”

“Why not narrower? You’ll save some fabric for patching.”

“Vanity, bless me!” Mrs. Younge laughed, sketching out wider sleeve-pieces and consulting her measurements, “I like a wider sleeve.”

Anne Hastings, who’d busied herself with a tatting shuttle, looked up over her slowly-growing collar. It was an odd picture – Mansion House’s brusque Lady With the Lamp scowling at some delicate knot-work – Miss Hastings, solid and ever-present, seemed to have arrived fully-fledged. Mary knew the work which went into an unobtrusive, neat appearance, but something about Miss Hastings made the hum-drum work seem strange to see. A great secret, perhaps, or the gears of a watch. Mary moved those thoughts aside, thinking they were not the most charitable, and however unkind Miss Hastings could be on the wards, she had still come to this little gathering, hadn’t she?

But Miss Hastings would still be Miss Hastings. “I thought you Quakers abhorred fashion,” she said at last, with a pinched expression.

“Elias Hicks’s Friends tend to,” Mrs. Younge replied absently, chalk in hand, “But on the whole, we’re a varied lot. Turn up the lamp, Miss Hastings, will you please?”

Eying the level of oil in the lamp, she did so.

“As an example: do you know where your light comes from? Some of it, at least.”

“Whales.”

“Just so. When I was a girl, Nantucket’s Friends dominated the whaling fleet. It’s a bloody business. Violent. And yet some do it.” 

“Quakers with a vengeance, eh?” interjected Matron, sounding like she was quoting something.

Mrs. Younge sat back on her heels, smiling at the sketched bodice and skirts. “If you like. And – well! I’m satisfied. Scissors? Miss Green, will you read?”

Mary handed off the scissors to Mrs. Younge, and the _Godey’s_ to Emma Green. She caught a glimpse of the kerchief: a cluster of pinks around a curlicued “AGF.” Not for her, then. The Southern nurse accepted, and flipped through the book skeptically. “Do you have a preference?”

“The further from Alexandria, the better,” said Mrs. Younge, shearing into the cotton with a decisive _snick!_ “If there’s something about _Terra Australis_ , by all means. We could do with some ice.”

Miss Green _hmm_ -ed – feeling her home to be slighted, perhaps? It was hard, at times, to read her – she could make her displeasure obvious enough, but she’d a belle’s unsettling habit of turning sweet and obliging. It was a kind of defense, Mary knew – pretending to be something less threatening, less appetizing, and the danger passes on. Or prey moves closer. She’d seen insects that looked like sticks, octopi that could disguise themselves as rocks, in Gustav’s books.

“Sunshine and Shade,” Miss Green read, still sounding like honey on a blade, “Saint Valentine’s Day, The Old Turnpike Road, After Many Days, Mr. and Mrs. Rasher – any of these catch your fancy, Mrs. Younge?”

But the woman in question had said her piece and was frowning at the cotton twill. She shrugged the question away. “You’ve a fine voice, Miss Green. Do as you will.”

Maybe that was mollification enough. Emma Green _hmm_ -ed again, and read a few lines under her breath. At last, she spoke up over the whisper of thread and scissors through fabric, the quiet hum of work. “It is very singular, but I hear those tones still: the small, sweet, susceptible voice, winding in and out of the delicate syllables, and I see the little brown, thin hand which was thrust up at the tollgate. I was sixteen years old at that time …”

**Author's Note:**

> For middlemarch, who prompted me: "How about a _Mercy Street_ fic that is all about acing the Bechdel test-- women only, period appropriate references to domestic life (quilting, sewing, making preserves?)" In gratitude to her for the excellent prompt, I borrowed a bit of her mathematical Mary & chess wizard Matron characterization - I hope that's all right!
> 
> So: one of the background characters is going to make a new dress, and between the cotton twill and Mary's search for a ladies' magazine for advice on cuffs, collars, and trims, Mary has space to muse on the characters of the women around her. A moment of half-frivolity in a hard war.
> 
> The _Godey's_ in question is vol. 62, from early 1861. You can find a full copy on HathiTrust! The frontspiece does exist as I described it - & features exceptional women. One is definitely Miss Nightengale. Sometimes research gives you a gift, y'know?
> 
> I've heard - mostly from re-enactors - women's Empire dresses (1800-1820s) referred to as "influenza gowns" because of how thin they were, and because the lines of those dresses didn't allow for any layering. I've never seen any contemporary references to Empire-waist dresses as such, but, hey, we're running with it. (I vaguely remember Margaret Mitchell calling an Empire-waist dress an influenza gown in _Gone With the Wind_? But it's been years.)
> 
> Nurse Younge makes reference to Elias Hicks, a leading light - pun intended - among late 18th/early 19th century American Quakers, who lent his name to one of the two major branches of Quakerism after the first major split in the early 19th century. Hicksite Friends tended to be rural and poorer, and kept closer to traditions of plain dress, while Orthodox Friends tended to be from urban centers (like Philly, or Mrs. Younge's Nantucket) and of higher socioeconomic standing. There's been splits since, but not relevant here.


End file.
